I'm back! Weeks 8-14

'W’ is for ‘When can I go home please…?’

It has been a while since my last blog, and my only excuse for my extended absence since week 8 is that I’ve been experiencing the dreaded phenomenon known as the ‘W’ effect among travellers and adventurers, when you come down from the high of your exciting experience with a very rude bump. It came suspiciously after that wonderful seaside break in Dammam, returning on the rickety train to the dusty heart of the desert with the knowledge that the University would not allow us another break for the next 8 months. In a nutshell I’d really been missing home, coupled with the fact that I was getting fed up with all the negative stuff that is difficult to deal with here.

‘C’ is for Christmas. It's banned.

Christmas in Saudi Arabia, my first ever away from home, was an incredibly surreal experience for me, even though I knew before I came that the heavily Islamic government forbade the slightest acknowledgment of Christmas festivities.

I had started to listen to carols from the middle of November in order to combat the inevitable onset of festive nostalgia, but they’ve done such a sterling job of blotting out any hint of Christmas celebrations that when a friend in Riyadh told me he was leaving to spend the holidays in Dubai, I didn’t have a clue what ‘holidays’ he was talking about until after the conversation!

So Christmas day found us trudging dejectedly to work and whispering excited ‘Merry Christmas’ to each other in our staffrooms. The bravest among us baked homemade Christmas treats to share at work, and the more efficient ones had for weeks been arranging Secret Santa circles, and I even heard on the grapevine that a few people had actually managed to smuggle in some Christmas cards and wrapping paper from the neighbouring, more tolerant, Arab states during their recent visits.

But it’s actually not as depressing as it sounds. Everyone living here finds their own way of celebrating Christmas, so it is quite easy to find something to do with the large population of ex-pats and foreign workers who club together to substitute family and friends back home. You really can’t survive in Saudi without a network of other foreigners.

My personal experience of Christmas in Saudi Arabia didn’t exactly risk the wrath of the mutawa (religious authorities), but it was sufficient as I was too ill with a cold to make it to any of the various secret embassy parties around the Diplomatic Quarter. On Christmas Eve a few of us organised another trip back to the Globe Restaurant in the Faisaliah building, which was a nice treat.

 

We could have done with a glass of mulled wine and some turkey, but we were content with the subtle Mince Pies and Stollen cake the chefs craftily sneaked onto the menu for the buffet:

Then on Christmas Day I was invited to have Christmas dinner with an Egyptian family who were actually Muslim, but insisted on celebrating Christian festivals as well. We had a blast, and while I sorely missed my mum’s mouth-watering Christmas spread, it was nice to have the warmth of a really welcoming family, and some friends, around me on Christmas day, and the Egyptian food was a great substitute!

 

























The family were incredibly sweet, although I was worried that the Christmas tunes they were playing on full blast would attract unwelcome attention from the mutawa, and they even decorated a Christmas tree for us!

 

Christmas Day with the Egyptian family was also the first – and last – time I tried the famous Arab hookah. They come in all sorts of fruity flavours, and although the mint and apple fumes were delicious, more than a small mouthful made me sputter and exposed me as a hookah virgin...

The students in one of my classes had realised that I was going through a patch of homesickness in the last few weeks, and they surprised me with a (forbidden) YouTube video rendition of ‘God save the Queen’ as a surprise for me when I walked into the class.

A couple of these same students defiantly wished me a Merry Christmas, even though I warned them not to because I could potentially get in trouble for influencing them towards non-Islamic celebrations. And another of my students had her mum bake me a whole box of date pastries just because I had fleetingly mentioned how much I liked Saudi dates.

So generally, I have been well looked after in my ‘W’ periods over the last few weeks, and I’m sure I’ll be back at the top of another exciting curve soon.

‘I’ is for ‘iqama’…

In order to be privy to full benefits as an employee in Saudi Arabia, you must have the golden ticket called an ‘iqama’, which can be issued to you from anything between 2 days to 6 months, depending on who you are buddies with – or who you’ve pissed off – at the embassy.

Some of us teachers are still waiting for our iqamas a record 4 months on, mainly due to the  incompetency of our agency, but we were told they were about to be  issued soon, ‘insha'allah’, and  so it was IMPERATIVE  for us to do the mandatory medical test IMMEDIATELY in order for them to process the application STRAIGHTAWAY. (There’s always this laughable façade of urgency about Saudis they must think equals professionalism, even though everyone knows the thing in question is never going to get done as immediately as they claim).

So we went to a clinic which specialises in the iqama medical tests – you know where you are because there’ll be a long queue of foreigners outside the bathroom holding 2 passport-sized photos and 2 tubes for ‘samples’.

After the official chest scan, bloods and pregnancy test, they shoved 2 little containers at us – demanding we produce two ‘samples’ to complete the test. Yep – if you want the golden ticket, you gotta produce the goods on demand! Those who were able to ‘produce’ on demand were mortified to be walking through the poorly-segregated clinic clutching their number containers of 1s and 2s, but eventually the nurse just told the rest of us to 'produce’ the prblematic sample the following morning and send the driver to deliver them to the reception after he’d dropped us at work. Yes, you read that right!

It was very funny explaining to our poor driver the urgency at which he was required to deliver our samples ASAP to the clinic the next day...
 

AND IN OTHER NEWS…

Baby, it’s cold outside

…No seriously, you have to believe me when I say mornings and evenings are now quite cold here – at one point it was something like 10◦c in London, and 13◦c in Riyadh, so actually we’re not so far off from the big chill. I’m currently recovering from my second bout of the cold in 2 months, and bugs spread very quickly in this climate.

Thoughts on my new abaya?!

I thought I'd go for some heavy embroidery on the cuffs and down the front...

 

 

A belated Happy New Year to all!

Mimi in Arabia xx

WEEKS 6 & 7

The weather in Riyadh is definitely getting nippier now, averaging around 25 degrees compared to the 35 degrees I experienced on my arrival. This makes going out in the day far more pleasant, and I am amused  to find malls displaying their autumn/winter wear, as 25 degrees is a summer not to be sniffed at back in  London…

Feeling adventurous one evening after work, we decided to investigate a place called ‘The Riyadh Mall’, where we’d heard we could find things at really cheap prices, and flex our negotiation skills. What we didn’t expect to find was the most ghetto-esque ‘mall’ in the whole of Riyadh. This was definitely a a local joint for the poorer Saudis that most of the country like to pretend don’t exist. It was, to put it politely, a little rough round the edges, and it was the sort of place that made us glad we had decided to visit as a group, and not on our own. Men there were even more blatant with their stares than normal, so we knew we weren’t in polite society, and even the taxi driver was bemused that a group of Westerns wanted to visit this place. He tried to convince us it wasn’t the sort of place we’d like, but we were adamant we wanted the experience, and that’s exactly what we got.

It was interesting to see the other end of the Saudi shopping mall spectrum, and we learned one very valuable lesson: Saudis, especially the lower classes with really strong Bedouin and native links, are a very very proud people, very sensitive and emotionally temperamental, especially when it comes to negotiating prices, and foreigners need to be careful not to cross the line and insult them. One minute the shopkeeper will be smiling and ushering you into his shop, complimenting your accent and enquiring where you’re from, and a few minutes later, if you’ve inadvertently offered too low a price for an abaya, he’ll get verbally aggressive quite quickly and visibly upset with you, and when he refuses to sell you the item at all that’s when you know you’ve hit boiling point and it’s time to get out fast…

Mimi in Arabia…by the Sea!

The second major holiday of the Islamic calendar, Eid al Adha, has fallen upon us, and the University broke up for what we thought was a 10-day holiday from the 11^th to the 21^st of November, until we received an email from our administration a few days ago, with an edict straight from King Abdullah:

Dear all,

We would like to inform you that it was announced by the Royal Court on Friday Nov-12 that schools and universities opening after Eid recess has been postponed until Saturday 27-November-2010. Consequently, all teachers working at King Saud University get to enjoy this extension of the holiday.

Wooo hooo!!!! This decision was so deliciously last-minute and typically Saudi, but it was such great news for teachers at KSU, because we are only allowed time off for religious holidays, so this Eid vacation will be our only break until the end of the academic year next summer (we have to be on campus during the semester breaks)

We still have about a week of the holiday left, but so far the highlight of my hols has been the impromptu mini-break a group of us arranged to the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, to the cities of Dammam, Al-Khobar and Dhahran. Although we all enjoy working and living in the capital Riyadh, it was extremely refreshing to travel across the country on a 4-hour train ride to stay in a city beside the sea, and Dammam and Al-Khobar proved to be as different to Riyadh as you can get. We were expecting it to be full of Saudis and tourists spending their Eid vacation there, but  we found that most people hot-foot it out of the country to Bahrain or Dubai or Egypt for the holidays, so it felt like we had the city all to ourselves.

Compared to landlocked desert city Riyadh, Dammam and Al-Khobar are along the gorgeous sea coast of Arabia, and you can see Bahrain from the corniche along the coast – the views are breathtaking, as you can see from the photos. The air was a welcomed break from the dusty and heavily-vehicled atmosphere of Riyadh, and our hotel was right on the beach, so we had balmy soft sea air the whole time.

Views of the sea from our suite:

 

       

And pics on the gorgeous corniche at Al-Khobar:

 

 

You can see Bahrain just over the bridge...

Other than the landscape, we found staying in Dammam an altogether opposite experience from Riyadh. It seemed that just living in a coastal city made the inhabitants far more relaxed and approachable and amenable towards us. On our arrival, we were swarmed by groups of taxi drivers welcoming us, joking about and offering their services, whereas in Riyadh men would never dare to approach a group of women in such a way. We picked Abdul, a driver with a 6-seater who proved a gem on our break and showed us all the hotspots and negotiated a good price to drive us around for the duration of our stay.



The group with Mr Abdul the taxi driver - you'd never get a taxi driver in Riyadh to take a photo with you!


Mr Abdul also introduced us to Al-Rashid, the biggest mall in all of Saudi Arabia, although it was unusually deserted as most of the shops were keeping reduced hours for Eid:

 

Exploring the coast of the city by night, we found picturesque scenes of couples (some not so legal), families, and groups of men chatting on blankets or around tables and chairs, enjoying picnics by the sea, or fishing.  



This was a relaxed and casual side to Saudi that we’d never witnessed in Riyadh, and at times on the corniche we felt like we could have been in the Bahamas or somewhere, if it wasn’t for the uniform black abayas floating about us in the wind. In fact, a couple of ladies in our group didn't let the abaya prevent them from jumping into the warm sea, fully clothed with abaya! The sun dried them off in about 20 mins though.
Although Saudi women still tended to wear the full niqab in the coastal cities, we also saw many with just the hijab, and no-one made an issue about us not wearing the headscarf while walking around.

Our driver Abdul introduced us to a relaxed and beautiful restaurant where you could either have dinner by the sea, or in a cluster of private tables in the midst of a secret garden:

 

Dinner by the sea:

  


Then dinner in the secret garden the next night!

Now, about the hotel. We were thrilled to have been upgraded to the 4 star suites overlooking the beach and all that, but we had booked this place because it had been advertised online as a spa hotel, and we fancied some pampering. So imagine our incredulity when we were told the spa was reserved for men! We thought the manager was kidding at first, but no, the luxury spa in the basement, strewn with rose petals and complete with 6 jacuzzis, waterfalls, gravel walkways, hydrotherapy rooms, Deluxe pampering rooms, steam room, charcoal room, sauna and ice room to name but a few, was reserved for the husbands of the wives for whom spas were surely invented!!! Turns out Arab men don’t spare any expense when it comes to their pampering either. When the manger realised he had made a mistake by giving us a tour of the spa, and seeing our minds boggle at how Arab men could justify spending so much time – and money – in an obviously feminine environment, he relented to our charms and promised to let us have the spa from 7am-8:45am the next morning. It was a small victory, but most definitely worth it…

 

The Charcoal sauna Room

The Ice Room

The Salt Room

We enjoyed our mini-break by the sea so much we were all a bit glum on the train back to Riyadh, but we were amused by the fact that Riyadh has only one railway station and Saudi Arabia has only 2 or 3 railway lines to destinations including Dammam, Jeddah and Mecca.

Even more bizarre was the fact that the railway station in Riyadh and Dammam are literally identical. The design, construction, architecture and interior mirror each other to the last detail, despite the two cities being 4 hours apart.

We were also quite pleased that we’d managed to get 1^st class tickets for the return trip, until we discovered that Saudi’s only rail service has only 2 classes: VIP and 1^st class. So essentially, we were just travelling bog-standard class, and it certainly felt like it!

FUNNY MOMENT
You know how you imagine, gosh, what would I do if I got locked in a supermarket overnight – imagine all that ice-cream I could eat… Well, that does become a reality in Saudi when shops close for prayer. Some of them kick you out, but some of them lock you in. We found ourselves in the coffee-lover's dream, locked in Starbucks at one point this week, and the temptation to sneak behind the couonter and make ourselves a white chocolate mocha was almost too much…